Baldus et Josina

Signed handwritten letter by Spaak. A play by Paul Spaak (1870-1936) director of Brussel's Theatre de la Monnaie and member Royal Academy of Belgium, is best known for the successful play Kaatje (1908). He strove to found a school of original and personal drama that was characteristically Belgian. Member Royal Academy of Belgium. Letter dated May 1923 from Paul Spaak to Suzanne Lorge tipped-in (attached). Letter consists of 2 very long pen written pages of play dialogue between 'Bas.' (Basilius?) and 'B.' (Baldus?). Limited Edition, 5 copies printed on Japan paper numbered 1-5, 20 copies printed on Holland paper numbered 6-25. This is number 20. Black leather 5-ribbed spine and board tips, marbled paper covered boards and endpapers. Gold lettering on spine. Top page ends gold gilt. Title page in red and black. Moderate general wear. Spine leather turned brown from black. Spine leather chipped, missing large section in middle. Suzanne Lorge (1904-1944), 19 at the time of this letter, became Paul Spaak's daughter-in-law when she married Claude Spaak, playwright. Angry with the suppression, brutality and racial intolerance of the Nazis, Suzanne volunteered to work with the French underground. Suzanne devoted herself to ridding France and her native Belgium of its suppressors. She joined the Red Orchestra intelligence network, a Soviet-sponsored organization founded by a Polish Jew, Leopold Trepper. This group conducted very effective intelligence gathering in Germany, France, the Netherlands and in neutral Switzerland with members known as the 'Lucy Ring'. The network became so successful, even infiltrating the German military intelligence service Abwehr, that the Nazis set up the 'Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle' to destroy it. In Belgium, in the spring of 1942, the Germans traced and monitored Red Orchestra operative's radio transmitters and made their first arrests of Red Orchestra agents. Over the ensuing eighteen months, more than six hundred people were arrested, including Suzanne Spaak in Paris. Sent by the Gestapo to the prison in Fresnes in October 1943, she was kept in horrific conditions and subjected to torture. On 12 August 1944, just thirteen days before the liberation of Paris, Spaak was executed by the Gestapo. In 1985, her valor and humanity was recognized by the government of Israel, designating her as one of the Righteous Among the Nations in honours at the national Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem. 255 pages.